By city and county
Buying where you actually live
Program eligibility genuinely varies by county in Texas. Tarrant is not Dallas, and a figure you read for one is not the figure that applies to the other.
Why the county matters more than the city
Texas assistance is administered at three levels at once: the state agencies, then counties, then individual cities. The income limits and purchase-price caps that decide whether you qualify are published per county, and neighbouring counties inside the same metro are frequently set to different numbers. That is why “the Texas limit” is not a number anyone can quote you, and why a friend in the next county over can qualify for something you do not.
Start with the numbers that decide it
These are the four that change most from place to place.
Property taxes in Texas, and why they decide more than the down payment
The single biggest local variable. Two identical houses a mile apart can differ by more per month than two mortgage rates do.
Read →Texas First-Time Home Buyer Assistance: 14 Programs and the Catch in Each
Which programs exist, who administers each one, and the catch in each. Several are city or county administered.
Read →Down payment assistance in Texas: the five shapes it takes, and what each costs later
The five shapes assistance takes, and what each one costs you later. Income caps are set locally.
Read →What home insurance actually costs in Texas, and why the average is the wrong number
Coastal, hail belt and inland Texas are three different insurance markets, and the statewide average describes none of them.
Read →City pages are not published yet
We have 4 Texas metros mapped and drafted, and none of them is published. A city page is only worth reading if it carries the local numbers and something you could not get from a search result, and we would rather publish nothing than publish a page that repeats the city name back at you and asks you to book a call.
In the meantime the guides above carry the county-level detail, and the programs index lists every Texas program we have verified. If your question is specifically about your county, the FAQ is the fastest place to start.
Your city is the biggest variable on this page
Assistance, price caps and tax rates all change at a city or county line, and sometimes at a street. Two minutes of questions gets you the version of this that applies to your address.